Many times, my extended family and I will have gatherings to get our kids together. This was such a fun little getaway for our little ones. We went in the summer of 2016. Sunnyside Beach was such a beautiful area. It was about a half hour from where we lived and we spent the whole day there barbecuing, playing sports, and letting the kids play in the sand (yes this place had actual sand and not rocks).

I believe that in order for family to be close, you must try and connect with one another. We often have outings, potlucks, and camping trips that we do. I remember growing up and loving to spend time with my cousins, aunts and uncle. I strive for my kids to have the same experience.

One of my cousins actually created this video (she’s pretty talented). I really appreciate how I can relive the moments that she has captured especially since my kids are only getting older. It’s always nice to have video memories of them growing up. These videos and places we’ve all visited together holds a close place in my heart.

These are great words to live by. After listening to this, I could completely relate and realized that this was part of the reason we decided to buy the house we currently live in. When we had purchased the house, it was less than $100.00 a sq ft. I think that what we wanted was something that wasn’t going to be so expensive because we didn’t want to worry about money.

I think in life whats most important is how you spend your time, not how you spend your money or all of the materialistic things you have. Although the house in it’s selling state wasn’t what we ideally dreamt of for a house, we purchased it because the price was just right and it didn’t matter what the house looked like but who was in the home with us at the end of the day.

We wanted something that would simplify our lives and our home completely does so.

Our kitchen was a blank canvas. It was in good condition, just very plain. We didn’t want to spend too much fixing the kitchen up, but we did want to make it look better than its current situation. The way we went about tackling this project was determining what key things we wanted to do to the kitchen and budgeted what things would have to wait for the “final” renovation.

We decided that the cheapest route was to paint the cabinets instead of purchasing new ones. It didn’t make sense to replace the current ones we had because it was pretty new. We went from an oak color to white. There was a whole lot of sanding, painting, and then some more sanding and some more painting. This was much more work than we had anticipated but the outcome was exactly what we wanted.

In order to make the cabinets look perfect, we had to unscrew and remove the cabinet doors. We then sanded the doors and spray painted the doors white with a spray gun. After going over one coat, we sanded it slightly and went over it with another coat. The second coat was with a brush as it gave it a more professional looking finish – in our opinion. For the cabinets themselves (not the doors), we painted because it would be much more work to spray paint it. We really don’t like taping (however we did a stripe wall that required a lot of taping… i’ll post another blog on that)!

After working through the cabinets, we decided to rotate our island and change the island countertop to butcher block. We love the rustic feel and look in a home and definitely wanted to incorporate that into our home. For the rest of our kitchen countertops, we painted the laminate black and did an epoxy coat over them to make it look shiny. I did a lot of research and found this blog most helpful: https://everythingsbetterwithsparkles.wordpress.com/tag/envirotex-lite/.

The last thing we did was moving on to our backsplash. We went with white subway tiles. The one thing we kept disagreeing on was the color of the grout. My husband wanted white grout, but I really wanted gray. I thought that the gray would make the tiles pop more instead of making the tiles look like one sheet. He slowly started to agree and once we had agreed on the color of the grout, we went ahead and tackled that project. We also added new hardware!

I absolutely love our kitchen and we did it with such a small budget! Of course once we decide to put more money in our kitchen we’ll get quartz countertops, and redo a lot more with the kitchen (maybe even new cabinets!). For now, this kitchen functions how it should and I enjoy cooking in it – which I believe is what’s most important!

Here is a before and after!

Before:

After:

Of course these angles are different, but the progress can clearly be seen! 🙂

Looking into the near future we would LOVE to redesign our boys room! Currently their room is pretty basic. The room has white walls, thin pine trimming, and just really lacks character. I want to make this room special for them and since they will be sharing a room for a while, I want to incorporate both their personalities.

My older son is 3 years old. He is such a character. He absolutely loves sports and superheroes. He does a lot of acting, pretending he is several different Marvel characters. I would love to do some sort of theme adding in some superhero decor!

My younger son is 4 months old. He’s such a happy, gentle baby. Right now, we’re still learning his personality – so this makes it hard! We do plan to change up their room again when they both are a little older so they can have more of a say in what they’d want.

The first thing we want to tackle is the walls. I feel like painting a room can instantly make a difference! I love neutrals and so does my husband, but are conflicted between what we like and what’s outside of our norm of adding vibrant colors.

We decided to see different color swatches and are leaning towards these two schemes.

This is actually harder than I thought. It looks like we have a lot of thinking to do! Decisions, decisions! I cannot wait to start the project, but we have to choose a color first!

While living in this 20 something year old home, we created a list of things that we wanted to change. The first thing that came to mind was tearing up the old floors and putting in hardwood. Initially, we thought this process would be a lot easier but when we started we soon realized that we had no way of turning back.

The way we started this project was selecting which hardwood floor color we wanted. After going back and forth several times, we agreed on an ebony color. The planks of the hardwood were wider than the normal ones. We decided to choose this type because we thought it was nice and we would complete the project fairly quickly. This assumption was completely off.

The good thing about tackling the project was that we had no choice but to complete it. Thank goodness this house was less than 1000 sq ft. After much research, we dove in and took out the carpet and vinyl in our living room and kitchen. This, I would say, was the hardest part. There were a ton of staples that we had to take out. It was just tedious.

Once that was done we laid out our planks to ensure that the cuts would be staggered. After the measurements of each planks we started cutting! From here, it went very quickly! We were able to get the space done in 2 weeks (while working full time as well).

When the project was completed, we really felt a sense of accomplishment. There were a lot of imperfections, but thats what made this house feel like ours!

Our very first home was the perfect size for us. It was actually the house I grew up in. At the time we lived in that house, I was 23 years old. The age of the home really showed and I knew I wanted to make it our own and give it a fresh look that really represented who my husband and I were.

My husband is such a handyman. He can look at something he would want to build or change and can figure out how to instantly recreate it. With his ability to build and both our eyes for design, I knew we could make this 23 year old house into our very own first home.